Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Like many world travelers, she developed a great degree of sophistication, enjoying flirtations and being romanced. Every few months there was a proposal of marriage to weigh and discard. Gabriela enjoyed her freedom. She measured her relationships with a rather cold-blooded shrewdness. She was content in Warsaw. This was the place—it always was. She realized that she would eventually find the man to go with the place, but life was good and she was in no hurry. Her only indiscretion had been a forgivable girlhood fling with an instructor whose after-school instructions were unforgivable.

When Gabriela left the Bronski house, she began her search for Andrei and Chris at Jerusalem Boulevard, knowing that neither of them did any serious drinking south of there. She checked newsmen’s and Zionists’ hangouts until she picked up their trail. Once on the scent, she quickened her search, as they had left their calling cards in the form of two medium-sized disturbances and one tiny brawl.

She entered the Bristol Hotel and made straight for the little bar inside the entrance of the night club. A new South American band was playing the latest tangos. Tangos were all the rage now. Perhaps, Gabriela thought, if Andrei is not too far gone, I can bring him back here to dance. He is such a lovely dancer when he wants to be.

She adjusted her eyes to the darkness and warded off the advance of a lone male in a crisp, authoritative voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said, “they sure were here. Left about a half hour ago.”

“In what condition?”

“Soused. Mr. de Monti a little worse off than his officer friend.”

Well, there go my tangos, Gabriela thought.

“Any idea of where they were going?”

“Mr. de Monti usually likes to cap off his benders in the Old Town. Says he likes to drink in Polish folklore.”

Gabriela stopped for a moment in the lobby and stared into the ballroom. It was filled with elegant Polish officers in uniform and elegant ladies in the latest Paris gowns and bearded, beribboned diplomats. It was a high-ceilinged room with dark mahogany paneling twisted into ornate gingerbread and herringbone parquet floors polished to a dazzle. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors alternated with floor-to ceiling tapestries depicting grim Polish heroes on statuesque white horses with billowing manes leading determined troops into battle. The immense crystal chandelier sparkled, and the elegant ladies and gentlemen hopped around the room in a counterclockwise circle in step with a lively polka. And when the music stopped, the gentlemen bent from the waist and kissed the ladies’ hands. Some responded with flirtatious eves from behind fans and others by looking off in boredom.

It was as though Gabriela looked at two different centuries from the slinky night club to the grand ballroom. The music faded as she walked north to the Old Town. It was balmy out, and the later theater- and movie-goers wandered along arm in arm and the streetwalkers prowled for business and the droshkas rolled by, holding cuddling couples.

She stopped for a moment on the central bridge and leaned on the rail. Far below, the commuter trains loaded up and sped over the river to Praga.

Gabriela hummed the polka to herself and was soon steeped in nostalgia. It was on a warm night like this that she had met Andrei and it was in a big, brilliant ballroom. Good Lord, Gabriela thought, has it been only two years? It seemed hard to recall a life between her father’s death and meeting Andrei. Only two years ... only two years.

The Seventh Ulany Brigade held its annual officers’ affair at the Europa Hotel. This was the eighth in a line of twenty-six events that illuminated the fall and winter season. The Seventh Ulanys had a particularly long string of great cavalry charges which could trace its beginnings back to the first king, Casimir the Great, in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the Seventh Ulany affair always brought out the cream of Warsaw.

Gabriela Rak, as usual, was nearly crushed by the overeager band of bachelor officers. They were particularly out of step, more pompous than the Second and Fourth Ulanys combined, and their humor less amusing than that of any regiment of the season.

At the end of the first hour of violent polkas Gabriela retreated to the sanctity of the powder room to rearrange herself for the second round.

Her closest friend, Martha Thompson, wife of her immediate superior at the Embassy, had a cigarette with her. Martha was a clever woman, a mother of three who retained that particular American chic.

Gabriela was bored. The new season was eight grand balls old and nothing was in prospect for even a mild flirtation.

Martha Thompson, on the other hand, was unvarnished in her enthusiasm. “Aren’t they all so beautiful in their boots?” she said.

“Good Lord, Martha, you can’t be serious. I’ve never seen so many fishy-eyed officers in a single brigade.”

“Trouble with you, Gaby, you’ve driven off all the serious contenders. You’re a pampered, spoiled little girl.”

“I’ve got an abnormal desire to crack some of them over the skull when they bow and slobber on my hand.”

“I kind of like it. Well, young lady, don’t wake one morning and find that the only thing left that’s any good is much married—or full of complications. Take a stupid one and train him your way.”

Gabriela smiled. “Come on, Martha, let’s have another go at it.”

She braced for the next onslaught and re-entered the ballroom on Martha’s arm. Both of them saw him at the same time. In fact, every pair of eyes seemed set on the door as the epitome of a Polish cavalry officer, Lieutenant Andrei Androfski, entered. After that second of awesome silence, which he sensed, he was engulfed by adoring, back-clapping cronies and was soon explaining with bravado how he had performed his latest athletic feat, the winning of the light heavyweight wrestling championship of the Polish Army.

“Isn’t he yummy,” Martha said.

Gabriela was still staring.

“Who is he?”

“Forget about him, Gaby. You’re really bucking city hall. No one has been able to solve him.”

“So?”

“Some say he’s a Tibetan monk who has taken chastity vows. Others say he has mistresses stashed all over Warsaw.”

“Who is he?”

“Lieutenant Androfski.”

“The Tarzan of the Ulanys?”

Martha sighed. “Well, back to my drab old reliable husband.”

Gabriela took Martha’s elbow. “Have Tommy introduce me to Lieutenant Androfski.”

“Well, well. A new hat at Madam Phoebe’s says you can’t get him to see you home.”

“I’ll meet you there at noon. I know just the one I want.”

When Thompson introduced Andrei to Gabriela, he neither bowed nor kissed her hand. He nodded politely and waited for the usual words—“So you’re the famous Andrei Androfski!”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Gabriela said.

A clever opening gambit, Andrei thought. “I know your name, Miss Rak. Like so many, I am an admirer of the work of your late father, so my name is unimportant. You can just snap your fingers and say ‘hey you’ and I’ll know you are addressing me.”

It won’t be such a dull evening after all, Gabriela thought.

What a lot of nonsense, Andrei thought, to play Victorian fencing games with spoiled brats.

“I have the next set of dances open, Lieutenant.”

Brother, he thought this one doesn’t even play coy. Works without a fan. Moving in for the kill already. Well, let’s look it over. Pretty little thing all right, a little on the lean side ...

“You do dance, Lieutenant?”

“As a matter of fact I am an excellent dancer, but frankly I do it only as an accommodation.”

Well! Does he know it.